All is gray in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
I have a problem with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. I think that this screenshot explain it well:
Practically I see only the HUD and all the rest is gray. Both in character creation and when I try to load an old save-game.
I have an ATI 6850 HD video card with the latest AMD drivers and Windows 7 64-bit. I also tried to revalidate the Steam cache for that game but it didn't change the result.
Do you have any idea how can I solve the problem? There are no mods installed except the default DLC things.
23 Answers
This is mostly caused by some bugs with newer graphic cards and HDR + AA (Anti Aliasing). Either turning HDR or AA off, or setting HDR to Bloom should fix the issue.
I do not know about any patch that fixes this issue. However, there is a few workarounds to get both of them working together:
- Enabling HDR, and disabling AA in the game options, while forcing AA to be enabled via CCC (Catalyst Control Center)
- Editing the "Oblivion.ini" file manually. Find and change the iMultiSample=0 in [Display] to 4 to get 4xAA.
I have an ATI/AMD Radeon HD 6750, also on Windows 7 64-bit, using the current latest drivers. I have HDR enabled, the rest of the graphics settings are at max, 4X AA is forced in Oblivion thru ATI Tray Tools, and I don't experience this issue.
I have the Unofficial Oblivion Patch, Unofficial Shivering Isles Patch, Unofficial Official Mods Patch and UOP Supplementals installed, though. These mods fixes a lot of bugs and might also have a fix for the issue you described.
The mod, Natural Faces replaces the texture files of the faces to higher resolutions, and might also fix this issue.
1Reinstalling Catalyst Control Center seems to fix it. I suspect GPU scaling may cause some problem since I need it on to fix a black border issue on my 27" screen. I'll try the HDR to Bloom fix if it reoccurs.
